


iocus

by thedevilchicken



Category: Indiana Jones Series, The Mummy Series
Genre: Adventure, Bad Jokes, Crossover, F/F, background canon relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-24
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If you tell me a joke I've never heard before, the first drink's on the house," said the bartender.</p>
            </blockquote>





	iocus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



A woman walked into a bar in Nepal. The year was 1929.

"If you tell me a joke I've never heard before, the first drink's on the house," said the bartender, watching as the woman settled herself down on a stool and knocked the snow from her boots. 

The woman frowned; she couldn't say she knew very many jokes. But, then it struck her. She smiled triumphantly as she started to pull off her thick, fur-lined gloves. 

"A Roman walks into a bar and asks for a martinus," she said. "The bartender says to him, _I'm sorry, do you mean a martini?_ The Roman says, _If I'd wanted a double, I'd have asked for one._ "

The bartender slapped the worn old bartop and she groaned out loud. The woman grinned. She held out her hand and the bartender shook it firmly, warmly. 

"Evelyn Carnahan," the woman said, by way of introduction. 

"Marion Ravenwood," the bartender replied. Evy had found precisely who she'd come to look for, there in that damp little Nepalese bar.

Marion hadn't heard the joke before, so Evy won her free drink. She got another when the first was done and then another after that, the two of them talking and talking in the warm torchlight until the sun came up on the snow outside the door and turned it so dazzling white that Evy couldn't bear to look at it. Marion could hold her liquor, it seemed, and Evy liked to think she could hold hers, too. She certainly didn't knock over the bottle. She definitely didn't do it twice.

Marion asked her to stay, so she did, and she told herself that was because they had a lot still left to talk about. But talking could wait for a few hours, at least. They went to bed, and eventually they even slept.

And that was how their strange friendship began.

-

It's been thirty years since they first met. Now that their children are grown up and are so often away from home having adventures of their own, Evy and Marion travel the world together. 

They fell into it quite by accident, Evy thinks, quite unintentionally: it was just an offhand remark that started it all, at the small reception after Marion's wedding to Indiana Jones, just an observation about a medallion that Jonathan had picked up on his travels overseas in Cairo. He'd been married four times by then though he'd promised three times was the charm, and his fourth wife's brother's friend or some such nonsense was a kind of dealer in antiquities, where _dealer in_ , Evy feared, was rather analogous with _fence of_. She'd have sent it straight back to Egypt first class, or at least to the British Museum, except that when she looked at it, really looked at it closely, really _studied_ it, it reminded her of something that she'd seen before. It reminded her of something she'd once seen hanging on a chain around Marion's neck.

When she took the little leather pouch from her bag and opened it up on the table over dinner, when she showed the medallion to Marion, her old friend's eyes went wide. She held it in her hands, turned it over, touched the markings on it. Then she looked at Indy. 

"Hon, I think we'll honeymoon in Egypt," Marion told her husband. 

"Darling, I think we'll have to postpone that trip to China," Evy told hers. 

Rick and Indy shared a look that said nothing quite so much as _here we go again_ , but Evy still thinks they were just as intrigued as their wives were. After all, there's a reason they're married, and there's a reason they're all friends. In a lot of ways, she thinks, they're very similar.

Two days later, they left for Egypt.

-

A woman walked into a bar in New York. The year was 1938.

"If you tell me a joke I've never heard before, the first drink's on the house," said the bartender, leaning down against the top of the bar and looking quite amused as she did so. If she was surprised to see the woman who had walked in through her door, she did a truly excellent job of hiding it.

This time, the woman settled on the stool and smoothed down her already very nearly perfect skirt, sporting a rather pensive look. This time, she was prepared.

"A Roman walks into a bar and holds up two fingers," Evy said, doing so herself. "He says to the bartender, _Five beers, please_."

The bartender groaned. The woman grinned.

"Still telling bad jokes, huh?" Marion asked. 

"I'm afraid I don't know any other kind," Evy replied. 

Marion hadn't heard the joke, so Evy got her free drink - to be honest, she got at least the five her joke had asked for. And then she told her why she'd come; Marion laughed and then she went along with her, no questions asked. They went half way around the world together, got thoroughly lost in a jungle and paddled back out in a borrowed canoe, but not before they'd left the bar and spent the night in Marion's New York flat.

They've always made an excellent team. 

-

Evy had never been to Tanis.

Marion and Indiana were rather old hands at Tanis, however, and they introduced Evy and Rick to Sallah and his children, who seemed to sing more British light opera there around the house than Evy has actually seen performed in her entire life. Sallah's still their friend today. There are many things for which she really ought to thank Marion more thoroughly, and that introduction is one of them. 

Of course, the problem was that it wasn't Tanis they were looking for at all. Sallah's friend read out the inscription there on the medallion's surfaces - though it was more of a headpiece than a medallion proper, of course - and told them how long the staff should be to fit it to. And then he said, "Of course, you know that this does not correspond to the same map."

"What do you mean, not the same map?" Rick asked. 

Sallah's contact raised his brows and raised up the medallion. "This is not the headpiece of the Staff of Ra," he said. "This does not go to Tanis."

Evy took back the medallion with a smile. "This is the headpiece of the Staff of Amun," she said. "I know where we need to go."

Rick didn't look thrilled when she told them to say the least, though Indy very nearly did. It made sense: just as Evy and Rick hadn't been to Tanis, so Marion and Indy hadn't been to Hamunaptra. Sooner or later, it seemed all roads led them there.

"Let's not raise a mummy this time, okay?" Rick said, as they made their way across the desert, perched on camelback. "And if we run into Ardeth, _you_ can tell him what we're doing here."

"I think Ardeth retired, dear," Evy replied. 

"So did we," Rick muttered, and he urged his camel forward to catch up with Indy a few yards ahead, but he did a substantially better job of sounding like a stick-in-the-mud than he did of acting it. Perhaps Rick's curiosity isn't quite as strong as Evy's is, but he's definitely still curious.

He's married to her, after all, and when he tells her _curiosity killed the cat_ , she tells him _cats do have nine lives, you know, and I've not even got to five yet_. 

-

A woman walked into a museum in London. The year was 1947.

"If you tell me a joke I've never heard before, entry is on the house," said the curator, watching the woman with a faint air of mischief where she was otherwise quite prim and proper. 

The woman laughed and the sound echoed in the halls. The curator pushed her sliding glasses back up into position on her nose. 

"What did the Latin verb say to the noun?" the woman said. " _I'd ask you to conjugate, but I'm afraid you'd decline_."

The curator clucked her tongue in mock-disapproval, but her smile gave her away. The woman winked. 

"I'll have to remember that one," Evy said. "It's really very good."

"Well, I don't like to disappoint my audience," Marion replied, and Evy took her hands in hers. 

"Let me show you around," she said. "Then we'll have tea. Rick's away with Alex, you know. We'll have the house all to ourselves. I have a new book ready, too, and I'm sure we can--"

Marion stopped her mouth with a kiss, with her fingers mussing Evy's neatly pinned hair. Evy felt her cheeks flush brightly, just as they had each time that had happened before.

"Or we could go to my office instead," Evy said, when Marion pulled back. Marion grinned.

That was precisely what they did.

-

Hamunaptra was buried underneath the desert sand, of course, and digging down to the map room took them three full days. Then, on the fourth morning, they let down a rope with a loop tied into the end so that Evy could put one booted foot in it. They lowered her down into the painted, columned hall below, and Marion followed after. 

"Those two always get to have all the fun," Marion said, the staff in her hand. "I told them to wait outside and we'll handle this."

"That's an excellent suggestion," Evy replied, the headpiece in her hand, and they began to fit the two together. "What could possibly go wrong?"

Evy found the right hole in the grid on the floor and when the sunlight hit the crystal, the city model on the floor showed them exactly where to dig. Of course, what could go wrong was the Russians; with age, with time, they'd swapped Nazis for communists, though Indy and Marion were the ones who had the frequent run-ins. The large men in uniforms separated Marion and Evy quite effectively from their husbands and they took them away in an unattractively perfumed van that had no business at all in a desert.

"What exactly do you want with the _lancea Longini_ , comrade?" Evy asked the colonel in charge. Her Russian was not quite as polished as her ancient Egyptian, but she thinks she got the point across. Unfortunately, the colonel didn't seem to know the answer, or else he was disinclined to discuss it with them. He locked them in a room instead. 

Marion had told her all about finding the Ark of the Covenant. Indy had told her the story of the Holy Grail; she'd also liked his father quite a lot, and Henry Jones Sr. actually told the story better than his son, she thinks. Evy had never found an actual Christian relic but there it was: the Spear of Destiny, the Roman lance that pierced Christ's side at the crucifixion. Sometimes, she _really_ loves her work.

When Rick and Indy came for them, they'd already escaped in a hail of bullets. They were sitting on the bonnet of a Russian jeep, reading the inscription on the spear; sometimes, just sometimes, she finds Latin is just as useful as Egyptian, and not only for the telling of terrible jokes.

"Well, we didn't raise a mummy," Evy said, her fingers twined with Marion's. 

"But I think we pissed off a whole lot of Soviets," Marion chimed in. "They're still tied up inside."

Rick and Indy shared a look. Evy and Marion shared a smile. They took the Russian jeep together, Marion at the wheel, and let Indy and Rick squabble over who got to drive their beaten-up vehicle back the way they'd come.

They shared a room that night, just Evy and Marion, quite triumphant, while Indy and Rick sat in the bar and drank and told each other stories, egging one another on until the sun came up.

In the morning, they went their separate ways again, with a hug and a reluctant smile. But they weren't apart for long.

-

A woman walked into a university. The year was 1961. 

"If you tell me a joke I've never heard before, I'll let you in for free," said the woman at the lecture theatre door. 

"I'm fairly certain it's free for everyone," said the second woman, with mischief in her eyes. 

The doorwoman shrugged. The woman tsked. Neither meant it, and so the woman went on.

"A senator was fifteen minutes late to the senate on a day when Cicero was giving a speech," the woman said. "He sat in his usual seat and quietly asked the senator next to him what Cicero was talking about. The senator replied, _I don't know, he hasn't got to the verb yet!_ "

Marion groaned. Evy grinned. They went inside together and took their seats there side by side. 

Since the spear, there have been other artefacts, other places, flights and trains and cruises down long rivers, camels and horses and miles trekked overland till their muscles ache and all they can do is rub the knots out of each other's shoulders. They've worked together, they've succeeded together, left their husbands at home and gallivanted across the globe together. There have been lost books and lost treasures, sunken wrecks, curses, demons, gods. There have been nights and days in cabins and hotels and tents along the way. They love their husbands, yes, but that doesn't mean that their strange friendship's not important to them. It's followed them for years, and bound them tight together.

"What do you know about the fountain of youth?" Evy asks, her voice hushed as Indy begins his lecture. 

Marion smiles. "Not much," she replies, "but I guess i'm about to find out."

And so begins the next adventure.


End file.
